Forwarding your Email to your own Email Address

Many Faculty would like to have their email automatically forwarded to another email address other than the one provided by MRC. I hear this request mostly from part-time faculty who may only be teaching one course for MRC and already use an external email address and find it a challenge to use the Web-Based email client software provided by ITS to access email from their students. I also know other faculty that are full-time and have their email forwarded to other systems. I have mine forwarded to my gmail.com account for example.

Did you know:

that email is the learning technology used most by instructors and students for class interactions at MRC?

typically only full-time faculty get the full Lotus Notes client software installed on their computers. Most part-time faculty are directed to use the Web version of Lotus Notes, called I-Notes, which is available on the Faculty Resources page in your MyMRC portal page. ITS says this is because more part-time instructors share computers.

through your MyMRC account you can access your email either through Squirrel Mail or I-Notes, and I-Notes has an advanced and a simplified interface that you can set as you log in. Squirrel Mail is the one students use.

the students can set their email accounts to forward to an external address of their choice but most students don't know this.

that most instructors don't use MyMRC other than to check their paycheque stubs and upload their final grades.

most instructors only have 250 MB of storeage in their @mtroyal.ca account where as Gmail.com allows you over 7,000 MB of storeage, it is free to use and blocks spam better.

if you ask the ITS helpdesk if you can set your email to automatically forward to an external address they will either say no, it can't be done or that you need to get your Dean to approve it.

that you can access your email inbox (@mtroyal.ca address) with any email client software that supports IMAP (a common protocal for email systems). This means that if you prefer to use MS Outook or Thunderbird to manage your emails instead of Lotus Notes, you can, although you will not get support from HelpDesk on this or install these programs on a college computer so you may have to do this on your own computer.

and finally, you can indeed set up your Lotus Notes account, here at the college to automatically forward your in-coming emails to an external email address of your choice by following the proceedure below. And you don't need to bother ITS or your Dean to do this. CAUTION, if you turn this on, your inbox on Lotus Notes will still receive incoming emails so you will need empty it periodically, when it fills up, and this may mess up your recieving meeting requests with your Lotus Notes calendar. Most instructors don't use that either.

this all seems to be a big secret so I am posting this to the mrfa.net website so you will know that you have a choice to use Lotus Notes or not.

Procedure to set your @mtroyal.ca email to automatically forward to an external email address (like Johnsmith@gmail.com)

Click on the Lotus Notes iNotes link to access your Lotus Notes online e-mail. It is in the middle row about 4 blocks down.

Login again using the same login as you just used to log into MyMRC.

Click on Access your email link, the first bullet item in the list.

Click on the Mail tab, just to the right of the Welcome tab near the top on the left side. If you haven't been in here before this is where you can see the email messages in your inbox.

Now look for and click on the Tools menu, over to the right, and then select New Mail Rule.

In the Create Rule Dialog box that should have appeared enter a name for the Rule, call it Forward if you like.

Make sure the status is enabled. You can also disable it if you wish.

Under create conditions, where it says "Sender", click on "Sender" and select "All Documents", then click the Add>> button. This will set all incoming email messages to be forwarded. You can use the settings so that only some emails that meet certain conditions are forwarded.

Under Specify actions, look for Create actions and click on where it says "move to folder" and change that to "send copy to".

In the empty field under "send copy to" enter the email address you would like to have a copy of your messages sent to and then click on the Add>> button so it shows up on the right side.

Leave the lowest field at "full" so that the full message is forwarded.

Check it all over. The conditions part should say something like: "When: All Documents" and the action part should say something like: "send full copy to johnsmith@gmail.com" If it looks good, click on the OK button.

Now test it by sending an email to your @mtroyal.ca address and see if a copy gets send to your other email address.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact me at RodCorbett@mrfa.net or 403.440.6220 or drop by the ADC.